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Trevor_Blake comments on Be comfortable with hypocrisy - Less Wrong
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The role of bodhisattva is hypocrisy as virtue. Nirvana is best for all, but a bodhisattva turns away from nirvana to help others go in. And as J. R. "Bob" Dobbs said, "I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of man I'm preaching to."
As I understand it, a bodhisattva also enters niravana eventually, so I don't see the hypocrisy.
Sort of. There's usually taken to be an infinite number of beings a bodhisattva needs to save before leaving samsara; bodhisattvas aren't supposed to leave anybody behind, and the buddhist cosmos is very very big.
The bodhisattvayana is more utilitarian than that. The goal is to maximize enlightenment; if avoiding final nirvana for yourself allows you to enlighten two others who wouldn't have made it, you should avoid final nirvana.
A better example of lionized hypocrisy would be the idea of 'skillful means' (upaya) in Buddhism. Might be better translated 'cheating as technique', the idea that highly enlightened beings can and should violate ordinary moral norms for the greater good. Though that's less about living with moral inconsistency and more about living with taboo tradeoffs between causes, I think.